Player Dies: Snake Bite and Run to Blame for Hockey Captain's Death

A Thai villager fights with a King Cobra in this village in Khon Kaen province in northeastern Thailand in this file photo.

A hockey player has died of a snake bite in Australia's tropical Northern Territory.

The 26 year old victim, Karl Berry, was reportedly cleaning at Marrara Hockey Centre in Darwin on Tuesday when he was bitten by a snake.

Berry, captain of the Commerce-Pints hockey team, believed that it was just a non-venomous python snake and so just picked it up and threw it back into the bushes. He did not immediately feel any affects from the bite and so just finished cleaning up and then went for a run.

The bite was reportedly on the man's hand, but was not overly painful and there were no signs that it was a venomous potentially life-threatening bite.

So Berry went on his scheduled 1.2 mile training run, however, at some point during the run he collapsed.

Emergency services were called, and St. John's Ambulance operations manager Craig Garraway has reported to local media that when paramedics arrived Berry was still conscious.

It was not immediately apparent though what was wrong with the man, and officials have said that it took Berry 15 minutes with paramedics before he even thought to mention the snake bite that he had received earlier in the day.

However, by the time paramedics found out the cause of Berry's condition it was too late and he died on Wednesday.

Officials have said that Berry's run was perhaps the worst thing for him to do, as the exercise had helped to pump the deadly venom around his body in super fast time, making medics' task of saving him impossible.